Christchurch and District Model Flying Club
Sloping Off - our newsletter

BEFORE I FORGET

BY KEN SPOKES - PART ONE

Ken sent me this long and very comprehensive autobiography with the instruction to extract the bits to do with aeroplanes and disregard the rest “as of not much interest”. Well, the more I read, the more I enjoyed what he had written and although a few years ahead of me, many of his experiences were similar to my own at each stage of his life. So I’ve got his permission to publish it in full, in the hope that you too will find it a fascinating account of a remarkable life - Ed

As much for my own amusement as anything else, I thought I would record my eighty or more years interest in aviation and aeromodelling - plus a few other things along the way.

I was born in 1926, ( five days later than the Queen) just over a year before Lindberg flew the Atlantic and in all honesty, I can’t claim to remember anything about that epic occasion or indeed anything at all that took place in the twenties. So all my memories are from the early nineteen thirties onwards.

Also, in the beginning, neither can I honesty claim to have been all that much interested in aeroplanes. I lived with my parents on the outskirts of Crewe which at the time was the hub of the LMS railway network with its vast marshalling yards, station and railway works. Crewe was “Railways” so it was only to be expected that for most of us boys, this was our major interest.. Engines were real and exciting. We would stand in awe by the steaming monsters at the end of the station platform and if we were very lucky, be hoisted into the cab. Also, once in a while, the railway works would hold an open day when we would be taken to see locomotives being built. We waited in eager anticipation at the side of the railway lines to watch the trains pass. In answer to the age old question ”what do you want to be when you grow up” the answer was almost sure to be “an engine driver”.

This was the golden age of steam. Like most of my friends, I had a Hornby clockwork train set which grew considerably in size with additions of birthday and Christmas gifts. I also had a Trix construction set which likewise grew over the years. It was surprising how many engineers I met in later life said they had a construction set as a boy.

In the early thirties, a simple radio set was about the most advanced piece of electrical equipment to be found in any household and that was probably home made with headphones.Reception required an earth plate plus a long external aerial fixed to a fifty foot pole at the bottom of the garden. It was powered by dry batteries plus a lead acid accumulator which needed recharging about once a week. It was only occasionally switched on to save power.

We had our first mains radio set about the mid- thirties - an HMV in a very handsome wooden cabinet. It received the BBC on the Medium wave and occasionally Radio Luxembourg on the Long which tended to fade in and out depending on the time of day. This was a commercial station and on Sunday evenings, I looked forward to listening to the Ovaltinies – a children’s program promoting Ovaltine. I loved the program but can’t say that I really liked the stuff. While appreciating the radio, it was often said how great it would be if only we could see what was happening. Television was just a dream which only became a reality for the Midlands when Sutton Coldfield began transmissions in 1949. Then it was just the BBC, a 12” black and white picture and only for a few hours a day. We watched it in a darkened room and thought it was utterly amazing.

Relatively few people had cars - we hadn’t. I think that there was only one in our road. Almost without exception, they were British made by firms with names such as Morris, Austin, Standard and Vauxhall, most long since gone to the wall. Motorists had hardly any restrictions and wereable to stop at the side of the road wherever and whenever even in busy towns. Car parks and parking meters were well into the future as would be yellow lines, speed restrictions, cameras and many other regulations facing the motorist today. Petrol cost about one shilling (5p) a gallon and was obtained from hand operated pumps by an attendant. Hard to believe today, but a ride in a car was a very exciting and memorable occasion.  Local travel was usually by foot, bicycle or bus. Longer journeys were by steam train. Travel abroad was by steamship although by the mid-thirties many overseas destinations could be reached by flying boat or airship.

On the home front, if there was a job to be done, a local tradesman was called in. There was little or no DIY. Few people had telephones and a host of facilities we take for granted today, were years in the future.

I attended the local primary school with all my friends.

 (That’s me, front row, second from the left.) We ran there in the morning, ran home and back for dinner (Northern mid- day meal) and home again for tea – about a mile and a half each way. I don’t know where we got our energy from but apart from the usual childish ailments we were “fit as fleas”. Looking back, I think we were extremely fortunate. The teachers were dedicated to providing an excellent education which was often drummed into us by rote accompanied by frequent doses of the cane for misbehaviour . Apart from conkers, marbles and the like which came and went with the seasons, collecting and swopping cigarette cards was an ongoing favourite playground pastime with a race to see who could be first to complete a set of fifty cards. Most men smoked and we used to haunt building sites and walk with an eye on the gutter hoping to find a disused pack with a card inside. To find one with the first of a new series was magic.

This apart, they were extremely informative and covered a wide range of topics. As aircraft were frequently featured I must have unwittingly absorbed a host of facts and figures that have remained with me to this day. (See end all will be revealed in due course - Ed) I attended morning service at church each Sunday with my mother and was never happier than when we were on our way home. Playtime on Sundays was confined to the garden - never in the road. My parents read the Daily Mail newspaper and I belonged to the “Teddy Tail” club, had a badge and received a card each year on my birthday. There were occasionally special offers for children and I once bought a “Seebackroscope” (work that out).

I didn’t excel at sports although I enjoyed playing football and cricket with my friends. I was never good enough to be picked for the school teams. I could however, run quite fast and often won the 100 and 220 yards races on sports day. My end of Term reports almost always suggested that I could do better if I tried. In contrast, I was more attracted to drawing, painting and making things. I am sure that my early efforts were nothing to write home about, but my parents always gave every encouragement and praise for whatever I did. My Grandad was particularly supportive and whenever he visited, always wanted to know what I had been making. He was retired then, but had been a Master Toolmaker in Crewe Railway Works where many of the tools used were made "in house". I'm happy to say that several of his personal tools were passed down to me and are as good as the day he made them, which must be well over a hundred years ago. He was always kept busy by somebody wanting something repaired. I can remember watching fascinated as he took my mother's sewing machine apart for a service. I think I must have followed in his footsteps - certainly not my father's; he was aprofessional pianist and had little practical ability. By some miracle, he had survived the horrors of the Somme and Passchendaele in WW1 and like many others at that time, spoke little of his experiences. However, as my interest in aeroplanes grew, he would sometimes describe the air battles overhead, which, in a lull in the fighting, was apparently looked on as entertainment for the troops.

Each year in the Summer we took a week’s holiday at the seaside to places in Wales, such as Prestatyn, Barmouth and Borth. Once, my mother and I spent a week with an aunt and uncle in Worthing .Passing through London we were met by a family friend who took me to Hamleys and bought me a model yacht. We had lunch in Lyons Corner House, went on the Underground, travelled up and down on escalators and caught an electric train for the final stage of our journey. All so new and exciting.

To be continued!

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